Don't leave your child in the car to Cook.

[Pyrrho]

Just read an article about animal shelters being full to the brim. It falls into a similar category, since people going on their summer vacation, simply abandon their pets on the streets. It speaks of total neglect towards life in general. Undisturbed vaccation is more important than the creature they supposedly cared for. I can't imagine doing that or forgetting a kid or even an animal for that matter in an overheated car. Sometimes I really feel ashamed to be a member of the human species.

The problem with your analogy is that people often abandon their pets intentionally, but typically do not intentionally leave their children in their car.

[Jenny A]

Just read an article about animal shelters being full to the brim. It falls into a similar category, since people going on their summer vacation, simply abandon their pets on the streets. It speaks of total neglect towards life in general. Undisturbed vaccation is more important than the creature they supposedly cared for. I can't imagine doing that or forgetting a kid or even an animal for that matter in an overheated car. Sometimes I really feel ashamed to be a member of the human species.

NO! It's not remotely like that.  This isn't about deliberately leaving kids or pets to die in hot cars.  It's about inattention causing death.  Abandoning pets, like exposing children as a method of birth control, is a deliberate act and therefore quite different.

[abaris]

Yeah, but how can you forget a child or any being you're supposed to care for in a potentially dangerous situation? How can you forget they are with you? How can you not notice they are with you? Other than simply not caring enough to remember or notice?

[Faith No More]

When you're driving, you go into an atuopilot mode, and if your child is quiet, it's quite easy for you brain to get settled into the mindset that you're drving all by yourself. I've had it happen to me, but as soon as I step out, I realize that I have a kid in the back seat.

[brewer]

Just read an article about animal shelters being full to the brim. It falls into a similar category, since people going on their summer vacation, simply abandon their pets on the streets. It speaks of total neglect towards life in general. Undisturbed vaccation is more important than the creature they supposedly cared for. I can't imagine doing that or forgetting a kid or even an animal for that matter in an overheated car. Sometimes I really feel ashamed to be a member of the human species.

One of the reasons I give time at a local shelter that does not receive state or county funds. Thanks for caring.

[Pyrrho]

Yeah, but how can you forget a child or any being you're supposed to care for in a potentially dangerous situation? How can you forget they are with you? How can you not notice they are with you? Other than simply not caring enough to remember or notice?

If you are married, I hope, for your sake, that your wife is more forgiving if you ever forget your wedding anniversary.

Look, read the damn article at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/...story.html

It has nothing whatsoever to do with how much one cares about one's children.  If you are imagining that, you have no clue at all about what is going on.  Forgetting something is not the same as not caring about something.  Please reread the previous sentence a couple of times until its meaning is assimilated.

[Rahul]

It has nothing whatsoever to do with how much one cares about one's children.  If you are imagining that, you have no clue at all about what is going on.  Forgetting something is not the same as not caring about something.

True. But it does exhibit a major level of sloppy thinking.

[abaris]

I've had it happen to me, but as soon as I step out, I realize that I have a kid in the back seat.

That being the crucial point, I think.

[rexbeccarox]

I was feeling a bit judgemental myself until I read the article Pyrrho posted; I'm no longer feeling that way.

I'm more disgusted by the judgement at this point than the parents who accidentally left their children to die of hyperthermia. They've suffered enough without a bunch of armchair psychologists deciding they should be condemned.

[Jenny A]

It isn't about who cares most for their child.  It's about the problems with human memory:

Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you’re capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”

David Diamond, professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida

Diamond explains it this way:

The human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.

Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that’s why you’ll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.

The number of deaths due to children over heating in cars rose rapidly in the 1990s and has stayed high ever since.  What happened?  Car seats  that must be placed in the back seat happened.  Once the baby in the car was removed from sight, accident rose.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25...97956.html

This is a problem not just with babies and car seats but with other systems. I remember reading a number of old London cases involving a rash of inattentive bus drivers lopping the top off of double decker buses killing the passengers on the upper deck.  It wasn't that the drivers had suddenly become bad people who no longer valued the life of their passengers.  What had happened was that several routes had altered slightly to accommodate new double deckers and the same drivers had remained on those route.  Not surprisingly some of these reverted to the old route do to inattention.  Many lives could have been saved by swapping the drivers.

Hospitals are finally beginning to recognize that some systems are prone to human error and admonishing the doctors and staff doesn't help.  Changing the system does.  Airlines have known and acted on this knowledge for a long  time. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/15/magazi...all&src=pm

The solution to infant deaths in hot cars is not to blame the parent but the establish systems for reminding the parent the child is in the back seat.  Do it yourself solutions include putting as stuffed animal in the car seat and placing the animal in the front seat whenever there is a baby in the car seat or putting your cell phone or purse next to the car seat in back.  I can imagine better built-in systems.  What I can't see is how shaming or jailing the parents will help.